Government Schools

The

New Child Abuse?

50 Percent of California Kids Can't Read

Functional illiteracy is reading and writing skills that are inadequate "to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level".Functional illiteracy is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language.

In California's government schools, even the official data shows that children are being turned into lifelong illiterates on an industrial scale — and at hefty taxpayer expense. Unfortunately, children all across America are being victimized by this. And the cause is hardly a secret, having first been exposed over 150 years ago. 

The latest numbers from the California Department of Education tell a tragic tale. According to an analysis of the data by CALmatters, less than one fourth of black boys meet even the dumbed-down Common Core standards used by today's government schools. More than half of them scored in the lowest possible category, suggesting they are unable to read even the most basic material. 

Among Hispanic boys, less than a third met the dumbed-down government standards in English. And among whites, while the numbers are slightly better, more than 40 percent failed to meet even the basic standard. In every grade except 11th, less than 50 percent of students met the literacy standards, which again, are dumbed down to the extreme. 

But the tragedy is hardly unique to California. 

The reason for this ongoing tragedy is simple. According to the Common Core standards (and the methods in use before them), children must start memorizing “sight words” in Kindergarten. Other terms for this quackery include the “look-say” method, the “whole word” method, and so on. Basically, it involves teaching children to approach English words as if they were Chinese symbols.  

By the time the children get to first grade and are introduced to phonics, the damage is already done in millions of their little minds — especially if their parents never taught them the basics at home. Because of the “whole word” quackery, their brains develop a reflex to look at a word as a whole symbol to be memorized, rather than a series of symbols, each one representing a sound that can be blended together and sounded out. 

What these children need is not more tax money, smaller class sizes, more LGBT sensitivity training, more interventions, more amphetamines, more dumbed-down “standards,” or bigger government. 

What they need is basic, remedial reading instruction that teaches them systematic, intensive phonics. 

Until this is understood and demanded by the American people, the education establishment will continue turning tens of millions of innocent children into functional illiterates for life, with all the pain and horror that entails. It needs to stop, now. 

DYI:  Shocking but not surprising as government schools have become a cesspool of mediocrity.  If you drill down into the numbers California has 2,450,178 children between the ages of 15 to 19 divide that number by 5 you will have a close approximation per age – 490,178.  Bear with me you will soon see where I’m going with this.  Common core is a dumb down set of standards highlighting a far greater problem.  At 10% complete illiteracy (I’m making an assumption) California is churning out approximately 50,000 individuals per year who are unable to function in a modern society.  I wouldn’t be surprised numbers such as these have been going on for 30 years in California that has ruined the lives of 1.5 million individuals.

 DYI